MUCH of this ill-defined 'taste of carnival' has the distinct flavour of a cultural URP - run some money and let some people like deyself.
In that respect, it truly is just a taste of Carnival, which, under normal circumstances is a sprawling, inexcusably crass smorgasbord of waste propagated by a welfare state under the guise of nourishing cultural patrimony.
For this mad experiment, a budget was pegged vaguely between 25 and 30 million. When some baulked at the costs in the context of fiscal drought across government ministries, NCC chair Winston "Gypsy" Peters countered, "Normal carnival costs 100 million dollars."
That peculiar remark offered no fresh perspective on the proposed expenditure and did nothing to make this taste of carnival idea any more palatable. Gypsy's original budget has since reportedly shrunk to $15m, akin to a sno cone in the midday savannah sun.
Either way, some people will get their "little end" - pod makers, calypso fakers, and ticket takers. It's hard, though, to predict how patrons will respond to this amorphous concept.
In the PC (pre-covid) years, crowd attendance at "government" carnival shows was less than robust. For the funereal Dimanche Gras event, it always seemed like there were probably more pigeons in the rafters than patrons in the seats. At any rate, Dimanche Gras is a haunting of what calypso once was.
This farce is now nothing more than an endless procession of toxic, soporific dirges; odes to the PNM government and anti-opposition claptrap. Little rant there, but exactly what a $15m budget can accomplish is as yet unclear, particularly as the announcement of a "quickie" carnival came late in what would have been the peak of the season.
Carnival is a peculiar hybrid of economic success and wanton squandermania.
In the private sector, entrepreneurs have become exceedingly good at monetising a renewable resource - the Trini penchant for escapism. Promoters and bandleaders have upped their game in catering to this infinite well of demand.
There are thousands of Trinis who stand ready to trade disposable income (and a fair bit of borrowed money!) for disposable music and disposable experiences. In this respect carnival is, for the most part, a roaring success. There seems no ceiling, for example, on the prices all-inclusive fetes can command. Let no one judge he/she who eats sushi (stushi?) in a dance.
On the other side of the equation, the state pumps taxpayer dollars into losing ventures year after year. There is little to no accounting for money spent, perhaps because carnival, through the eyes of the state, will never be seen as a business but rather a rudderless imperative, "fuh de sake of de culchure."
Steelband music, the only unique element of carnival, is an unquantifiable singularity absorbing vast resources. PanTrinbago, however, seems to have perfected the art of dodging all oversight. For the countless sums poured into the pan fraternity over the years, the art form and its practitioners aren't any better for it.
For the "inv
